Continually study the craft of writing. Take advantage of all the writing resources you can get your hands on. Read books and articles on writing. Join writers groups. The idea here is to get equipped with the tools needed to successfully write a solid and publishable book.

Revise and proofread your manuscript until you are pleased with the outcome. Your final draft should NOT be your first draft.

If your book is a picture book, now’s the time to prepare your pre-existing illustrations or images or hire a children’s book illustrator. All images should be 300 dpi (i.e. high resolution).

Pick the book formats you plan to use (hardcover/paperback). If you’d rather go the ebook-only route (which I don’t recommend because you’ll limit your market and sales opportunities), you should look into ebook conversion and distribution services.

No matter what the genre, now is also the time to hire a book cover designer or design it yourself only if you are a professional graphic designer. Keep in mind that most self-publishing companies include book cover design in their publishing packages; however, you should only consider designers who create “custom” designs. There’s a big difference between “customizable” and “custom.” The former usually implies that the designer is working with a template, whereas the latter suggests that the designer is creating something unique. Since the cover is the first thing readers will see (usually), it’s important to put a lot of your focus on having a professional custom cover design created.

Obtain the ISBN and barcode directly from Bowker. You can also obtain the ISBN/barcode via a publishing package.

Register your copyright. Understand that in the United States, manuscript text is copyrighted upon its creation. As per the US Copyright Office, “Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form,” and therefore registration is optional but recommended.

“Stephanie (the editor) did an awesome job with the line edits. I agree with her changes. I had to also answer some of her questions to make a couple of changes as well… Thanks so much.” –Gregory Brown

“The entire process of self-publishing was my first rodeo. Mindstir Media was nothing less than exceptional. Their team of professional, skilled and friendly staff was evident from beginning to end. We collaborated so well during the illustration process and the timely, ongoing communication helped move by book way ahead of its anticipated completion date. Overall, I am extremely pleased with my first book.” – Tanja Huston

Most Facebook marketing articles give what I call “entry-level advice” or provide a sort of “Facebook 101” experience, and that’s great for folks who haven’t yet delved into Facebook for marketing their books and products. You’ll see articles such as ‘How to Setup a Fan Page’ or ‘How to Get More Facebook Likes’. But what about advanced Facebook marketing tips and strategies for authors and entrepreneurs? There are many authors/entrepreneurs already using Facebook for marketing – and I’m assuming that you’re one of them (or you will be). You’re probably looking for ways to improve your current Facebook marketing experience. So here are my top advanced Facebook marketing tips for authors/entrepreneurs…

1) Use Facebook Insights to see what’s working and what is not working. Your main objective with Facebook marketing should be to drive targeted traffic to your website. Traffic that will ultimately convert into sales. In order to do that, you need to create outstanding content. Content that makes people want to share it with their friends. Once you’ve taken that Facebook 101-ish step, your focus must turn to your Facebook Insights (i.e. analytics). I’m going to include a few screenshots. In the first screenshot you’ll notice the Insights button at the top of the page. I’ve circled it for effect.

You must be logged in to your page to see that button. Click it and that will bring you to the Overview section of your Insights (see Screenshot below). That area gives you most of the info you need – overall Post Reach, Engagement stats, Page Likes, analytics for your 5 most recent posts, etc. Admittedly, I’m not going to get into every single aspect of Insights. I’m instead going to focus on the pieces I feel are most important. Yes, this is my opinion….

Looking at the above screenshot of the overview section, you should notice a few things right away. First, the Post Reach is really solid. I didn’t arrive at those numbers organically (more about that later) but I’m happy to see that my posts have reached just shy of 70,000 in the past week. That’s something you should be looking for! Second, the Engagement numbers are up. I have a solid number of likes and shares and post clicks. Third, my recent posts were successful despite using various post times. Many experts will tell you to post at certain times during the day or on certain days, but there’s no way to generalize in that regard. The best time to post content is entirely dependent on your content and your audience. An ideal time and day for one brand won’t be ideal for another. That’s why your own Insights are so important. Don’t ignore them!

2) Focus on link clicks, not so much on likes.This leads me back to Insights. You can click on any of Your 5 Most Recent Posts (or See All Posts to delve deeper) within Insights and it will give you Post Details on that specific post (see Screenshot below).

For this example, I’m using a link post I created recently. That means I simply linked out to a page on my website (added a URL (http://www.)) and waited for the preview (image used on the blog post) to appear on the Facebook post, and then I deleted the URL from the post and added a quick title. That way every time someone clicks the image they are automatically sent to my website. This post received 318 likes, 10 comments and 117 shares. Fairly solid results but I’m not all that interested in those stats. I’m interested in traffic generation above all else. I used the Link Post method instead of the Photo Post method because Facebook is now getting away from giving photo posts priority. What in the world is the difference between a photo post and a link post? A photo post (for driving traffic) is where you upload a photo to the Facebook post and then add a call-to-action (CTA) with a URL to that photo post, such as The resources everyone is talking about…. 50+ Writing Resources & Top 10 Self-Publishing Tips – FREE: http://www.mindstirmedia.com/50-writing-resources-and-10-self-publishing-tips/. Generally, people will click on the photo to learn more or see more but clicking on the photo in that case will not send traffic to your website. Only clicking on the actual URL in the post will result in traffic generation. Notice in the latest screenshot how it mentions Post Clicks. There are three categories– Photo Views, Link Clicks and Other Clicks. They all count toward your overall Post Clicks. Many authors and entrepreneurs look at that stat and believe that the total number of Post Clicks is the total number of visitors sent to the website. That will always be false with a Photo Post! You’ll see a large number of Other Clicks and Photo Views and Link Clicks. Photo Views is simply as it sounds. Other Clicks is defined by Facebook as “clicks not on the content of the post.” So if your Photo Post receives 500 Post Clicks but only 10 of them are Link Clicks, you have a MAJOR problem. In my example above, 100% of the Post Clicks are actual Link Clicks because I used the link post method. A Link Click equals a website visitor.

3)Use Facebook for building your email list.Facebook 101 tells us that we should focus on garnering likes, shares and comments. Those are all important aspects of Facebook marketing; however, you shouldn’t totally rely on Facebook as your traffic source! You don’t own your Facebook page. Facebook can change their algorithms any time they’d like – and they have. In fact, just recently they decided to cut back on the amount of organic reach they give pages. For those reasons, it’s crucial that you use Facebook to build your email list. You can contact the folks on your email list any time and you don’t have to worry about ever-changing algorithms. You’ll own the list! An easy way to use Facebook to build your email list is to simply direct traffic to an optin page on your website. Look at the latest screenshot… When people click that link post they are sent to an optin page on my website, where they are asked to fill in their name and email address.

4) Understand that organic “reach” has changed and you’ll now have to pay to reach a high percentage of your fans. Sure, you can still see some decent organic reach numbers, but those numbers have drastically declined across the board. You may have noticed that the non-promoted posts you send out are now receiving less engagement than ever before. Facebook is now encouraging Page users (notice I didn’t say “Owners” because you don’t own your page) to advertise, advertise, advertise. Now, I understand this is a touchy subject for many authors and entrepreneurs. You attracted all these fans – they opted in to receive your updates and now they can’t see all your updates? It doesn’t seem entirely fair. However, simply grumbling about it and refusing to pay Facebook a dime will not help you in the long-run. Remember those Post Reach stats I shared earlier? I had mentioned that I didn’t reach those numbers organically. That’s right; I used Facebook ads. I have a monthly Facebook budget that I keep. But I only pay Facebook for traffic that I drive to my website! In other words, I’m not “promoting” cute photos or inspirational quotes. I only promote link posts and I end up spending somewhere between 20 cents to 50 cents per link click (i.e. website visitor), which is dirt cheap for targeted traffic. I advise you to set aside a small Facebook advertising budget for each month and only promote link posts.

Don’t self-publish your first draft: If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a self-published author banging his head on his desk. It happens every few seconds. Listen very, very carefully. There’s another bang. He thought the book was genius when he clicked publish and he had even “spell-checked” the manuscript beforehand, but now the Amazon reviewers are saying some really nasty things about his book. Things like, “I couldn’t get past the first chapter because of all the errors” and “This was obviously self-published…” Don’t be that guy. Fine-tune your manuscript by going through at least one round of revisions and self-editing and then hire a professional editor to bring a different perspective to the project. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway: The first draft of anything is crap. Don’t publish crap.

Don’t overprice your book: I’m really surprised that more authors aren’t discussing this. I’ve seen multitudes of authors trying to sell their books at exorbitant prices. You need to think as the consumer. Why would a customer pay $30 for your paperback book instead of $12.99 for a NY Times bestseller? Or $9.99 for your ebook instead of $6.99 for Stephen King? They probably won’t! Try enticing the customer with a competitive (or discounted) price and watch what happens.

Don’t count on sales at brick-and-mortar bookstores: It’s true that many indie bookstores will happily stock your self-published print book. Some of them will work out consignment deals with you. From my experience, they’ll want around 40%. Major chains will want at least 50% and you’ll generally need to go through layers of bureaucracy in order to get your book stocked. You’ll also need to take the risk of making your book “returnable.” As you can imagine, this could get ugly very quickly. For those reasons and many others, I advise self-publishing authors to focus primarily on online sales. Your profit margins will increase and you’ll be able to cover a ton of ground much more quickly.

Don’t think that just having an online presence is enough: “I’m on Facebook,” says almost every self-published author. “I’m on Twitter. I’m on Pinterest. I have a blog. I have a website…” This is all very nice, but it’s not enough to simply have an online presence. You need to be active on all of your platforms. In other words, you can’t just “set it and forget it.” Treat your online presence as you would your own home. Care for it, live in it, and love it.

Don’t expect that strangers will automatically care about your book: I have to admit that when I first started self-publishing, I thought everyone needed my book. Everyone. My inspirational book could motivate and change lives. I knew it. But no one cared at first (aside from friends and family, of course). I had to make them care. I accomplished this by – wait for it – networking! I created Facebook groups (and even Myspace groups; remember Myspace?). I befriended book lovers on Facebook. I reached out to fellow writers by email and met them in person at signings and other events. Most importantly, I made good impressions on those people and most of them supported me by helping spread the word. I know this isn’t fun or sexy advice. Many self-publishing authors looking for advice don’t want to hear that this ride could be a long one. Throw away the idea of “quick and easy” and focus on building relationships!